Opening a Time Capsule — Revisiting my First Composition

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Background

During my maths undergrad, I joined the music soc. at uni., which
gave me access to a piano for the first time in seven years.  I started
practising classical pieces and improvising like a fish that had been out
of water for too long.  I wrote my first complete piece of music.  It was
1996.

Listening back to it now, it’s like a time capsule for how I felt at the
time.  I’d been practising Chopin and Debussy, and it’s amusing now to
hear their influence in this piece.  I’m not sure that anyone composes
in those styles any more.  This was before I went on to learn about
contemporary classical music.


Technique

The piece opens with a motif statement: a modal progression through
four chords.  This motif is the kernel for the whole piece.

Four sections follow: individually each one consists of the same chord
progression as the motif, and together the four sections correspond to the
four chords in sequence.  The second is downcast relative to the first.  
The third is brighter and upbeat relative to what has gone before.  
The fourth is resigned but unresolved, and anticipates a return to the first.

A restatement of the motif serves as a coda.

As such, the piece is self-referential (I’d been reading up on AI at the
time) in that the relationship between the four sections is an elaboration
of that of the four chords to one another.  The trick is that each chord
of the motif gets rendered in the mood of each of its constituent chords!


Mood

The cyclic switch, from downbeat to hopeful outlook to resignation,
resonated strongly with me at the time.  When I hit on the opening
theme, I felt I had to explore it, to work to make something out of it.  
The devised technique was a means of exploring the theme from each
of its vacillating vantage points.